transportation

I haven’t owned a car since 2003, and it's a tremendous relief. I no longer receive parking tickets or speeding tickets, don't have to control the temptation to drive like a lunatic. (I was a road rager if there ever was one.) Each month, I need not concern myself with car payments, insurance payments or maintenance payments.

Having moved to Brazil, the dreaded task of removing snow and ice from a car windshield is not only in my past, but it is inconceivable to those in my present.

The alternatives to driving have become much more attractive to me. Having moved to within a five minute walk of the ocean, I no longer need to spend ten dollars of gas and two hours of driving to reach the Jersey Shore. I just walk.

Because the nearest shopping mall is eight hours away, the ritual of endeavoring to earn more and more money to drive to the mall and invent new ways to spend it is much deemphasized. No more shopping mall parking lots for me! Less is more.

In Brazil, there are buses that reliably take passengers to most anywhere we might want to go, no matter how remote. So, when I want to go to a beach further up the coast, I just wait at a bus stop on this beach for a bus to that other beach. Unlike in the United States, the buses in urban areas here typically run twenty-four hours per day, which makes them a viable alternative, even for nocturnal people who like, sometimes, to party all night.